a spoon among spoons.
When we argue I go out at night
to the eucalyptus grove alone to stew.
That’s dramatic but it’s local.
But if it’s my darkness that matters
then I’ll matter the dark too, the way plants do.
I like the soggy moss, the diaphanous foghorn.
It makes me feel naked
and molecular. Look, here’s what it’s come to:
you are safe and dry somewhere else,
and I’m tired of being a ten-fingered thing, belligerent.
I don’t want to be too Buddhist about it
but when the foliage stirs
I get unhooked from myself, my awful oars.
A naughty vanishing act—
I become many-bellied and inarticulate,
as multifarious as root in the soil.
What is the contour of the living? I exist
and I am burrowed
and I am loving this world, piecemeal—
partly because I have no choice in the matter,
partly because you are in it.
I could become rock and birch-bark,
I could destroy the ego,
but what good would that do? I’m a simple darling.
I enjoy my amenities,
my washing machine, your box of tools.
We’ve filled our house with innumerable goods.
Beyond these bending trees,
my fear is wet-haired and brackish:
I have climbed myself out to the edge tonight
and I will climb myself back.